Each were given their meals in turn, but Empyrean gave none of their treatment special consideration. They were served as befitting the hospitality of his position - he was their ruler, but he was also in turn their benefactor. Let them appreciate and enjoy the things he was no longer capable of. It would serve them well to understand the wealth he yet held.
As each moved through their meals, and in turn their own goals, Empyrean listened quietly. He offered no judgement, no immediate reprisal, barely even a consideration until the last had spoke - and he silently considered their thoughts. To each he would turn;
"
Taeli Raaf
. You have served the order well in your time, and you are correct in that knowledge gives us power. Discovery, experimentation, the drive to understand - it is a trait I understand well, and compare to the highest of virtues. In that we can agree - but were I to propose to you that science as we know it has a limit, and that limit must be undone, would you be interested or dismiss me out of hand?"
He looked to
Diodoros
- but as the man had chosen to be quiet, he simply pass over him. If he intended to listen, then so be it.
"
Darth Kentarch
, you are right. I have taken over the Sith to destroy the enemies of the Sith - but what enemies, and in what context? It is not my authority they recognize, only that they understand a truth I have not yet laid out clearly enough. That we are all slaves - and the Sith's strength is our willingness to unshackle ourselves from servitude."
"
Lina Ovmar
, there is nothing more important than the heart and the mind.", he said, pointing to his own chest, narrowly nearest the great cut that bisected him leaving a grisly cavity, "But what drives the hoi polloi is nothing of a mystery to myself. Psychology and its denominations are recognitions and predictions of patterns - but what generates those patterns is what I have declared my enemy.", he said with a nod.
Empyrean had looked to
Darth Dekaltis
- and had considered asking her a question, but decided against it. Instead, he turned further to look towards
Kai'lyn
. Another who has come to listen, and he would not take that from them. He gave them a gentle, subtle nod and looked to
Darth Strosius
- a man who had already openly declared himself hunting Empyrean's head.
"You are right the Sith bring order and stability - but it is fleeting. Would it surprise you to learn that there exists a guiding hand already, that stands above all things? It is the enemy you seek, that which destroyed the Sith Empire, and hunts for our Order still. It is an insidious foe, more so than any heretic or varlot you have encountered. It is the great deceiver, the denier of freedom.", he mused as he looked to Alisteri's apprentice.
"It is a great thing to want to destroy slavery. In that, our goals align perfectly - but I seek the greatest enslaver. Temper that hunger you feel, child, for losing your self control is the chains the code speaks of. It is self awareness that gives us power, keeps us capable and strong - a Sith who falls to their own hubris will die to their own hubris. Insidious and internal as it is."
"Perfection, growing under conflict, these are strong ideals in line with our code - but mastery over the force is a falsehood. There is no mastery, only escalation. Mind that."
"And you are correct, but suffer from the lack of scope Sith of every generation do,
Darth Aion
. That which shackles is not attachments as Darth Malgus laid out, nor anything else. It is not the Jedi, it is not ourselves, but something much greater.", he continued.
"Do you know what my goal has been since I was a child?", he asked them, rhetorically.
"It has been to be free of chains. In that, the Sith Code spoke to me as a young man with no name, only chains to mark me as a slave. In my youth, I imagined power as a means to freedom - and so I attained it. I gave myself a name, title and all in Darth Maliphant. Still, I was chained by circumstance - the Empires, the Sith, and all that came with it. I decided to be free, I must be indepedent. In doing so, I created the IGBC, became the richest man in the galaxy and dominated galactic trade in its totality. Still, providence sought to take me from my place as the greatest, and I was not yet free. There was visions, guiding power to something more.", he mused as he gently prodded a gilded marble wine cup before him.
"I sought more, and more. I became a dangerous opponent, a philosopher of my time, broached the very unknown aspects of the Force to understand theorem after theorem, power after power. The Telos Holocron, Valkorian's Holocron, everything I could get my hands on. I absorbed it. Endlessly.", he mused as he recalled.
"In the end, I relied on the Worm Emperor for greater power - and in doing so, granted myself nothing but death at his and the Jedi's hands."
He was silent for a moment, but his face was unreadable.
"Now, I have overcome even death - I am immortal so long as my will survives. I can not be cut down, I can not be stood against. There is nothing in the galaxy left but for me to conquer it by will and force - and yet there is pressure to my power, a response. The Galaxy demands I die, demands I surrender myself in every waking moment, and that I do not return. It fears me, demands you all here recognize me as death. Demands the galaxy to recognize my death."
He looked up at this to them.
"And I have denied it, because my will is stronger than the Galaxy's."
"The Galaxy has a will, and it demands us to follow - it guides the Jedi through visions, through wholeness and oneness with the Galaxy. They hear its cries and respond to it like a mother sheep to her bleating children. Where it demands, they go so that they may bring balance. The common man, the Imperial, the bounty hunter sees opportunity put before him by fate and gambles on it to see his success. The Sith...", he said as he readjusted.
"The Sith are not fooled by the Great Deceiver, because unlike the others our power comes from our self. Our identity, our emotions. It is fundamentally individualistic - but it is how we attach ourselves to the mortal world that allows for our destruction. Hubris, attachments, material things. All these drive Sith to forget and fail - as they have time and time again. But Sith are eternal, implicit to the Galaxy as we see its inherent contradictions, its cycles, and declare it anathema."
"The reason I say all this - is that despite whatever your goals may be, so long as they are placed in the material, the sciences, the conquests, the power, the individual, you will fall into the trappings of Fate eventually. It is Fate that will see you turn to dust in its grindstones, and only by recognition and vigilance, and eventually power can you overcome it."
"Until then, nothing can be trusted. No system, no enemies, no friends - Fate must be destroyed at its core before we can rely on the natural processes, to understand the merit of any system or idea. Until then, nothing else matters.", he said.
"Have you felt this deceiver before?", he pondered to them, posed to them.